First Post from Peace Corps

It’s Saturday and we’re into day 5 of training here on St. Lucia. This morning we had a mental health specialist up to talk with us about the challenges we’ll be facing over the next two years. We brainstormed all of the challenges that may come up that could make us feel down while we’re volunteers. And then she stressed that mental health is not about being positive all of the time, that it’s perfectly normal to be down, but that it’s the way we cope that allows one to stay healthy. So next, we talked about ways to cope with all of the challenges we had identified earlier.

The afternoon is here and we’ve been given it off to relax and hang out. So I thought I’d use it to write my first post from the islands. So far everything is going well. There are 21 new volunteers in the group. 9 including myself will be going to St. Vincent, 10 are headed for St. Kitts, and 2 will be on St. Nevis. We have a great variety in our group, people from all over the U.S. with experience ranging from recent college graduates all the way up to a volunteer in her late seventies, with the rest spread out in between. There are two married couples and out of the 21, 6 are male.

For the week, we’re staying at a retreat center on a hillside just outside of St. Lucia’s capital, Castries. The center is run by a group of Benedictine nuns who have been very welcoming and prepare amazing meals for us.

Through the five days of training so far we’ve been giving some great and useful information. I found out I’ll be living in the town of Chateaubelair which is on the western coast of St. Vincent about 2/3 up the coast. There is already a PC volunteer who’s been there for one year and I found a blog she writes and checked it out to get an idea about the place. Reading it got me excited about the move there. I also found out that Peace Corps has been in the area for 48 years and that I’ll be here for the 50th anniversary in 2011, so I’m sure there will be some huge festivities to celebrate when the time rolls around.

That’s all for now. Monday morning, I repack my things and head out on a short flight to St. Vincent where I’ll have 7 more weeks of training while living with a host family. I’ll be sure to write more.
The photos above are from around the retreat center and the others I took while we were in the capital yesterday doing a scavenger hunt.